Magnum

Magnum (pronounced mag-nuhm)

(1) A large wine bottle having a capacity of two ordinary bottles or 1.5 liters (1.6 quarts).

(2) In ballistics, a magnum cartridge or firearm (a loaded with a larger charge than other cartridges of the same calibre).

(3) A firearm using such a cartridge.

(4) Used generally, unusually great in power or size:

1788:  From the Latin magnum (“great, large, big" (of size), "great, considerable" (of value), "strong, powerful" (of force); of persons, "elder, aged"), neuter of magnus (large), from a suffixed form of the primitive Indo-European root meg- (great).  The original use in English was to describe the large wine-bottle, then usually containing two quarts.  As the name of a powerful type of handgun, it was first registered in 1935 by the US company, Smith & Wesson of Springfield, Massachusetts.  Outside of ballistics, the most common use is now probably “magnum opus" (masterpiece, a person's greatest work, literally "great work", applied, in literature, music, art and (sometime a little liberally) popular culture.  Magnum is a noun; the noun plural is magnums or magna.

The magnum’s place in the hierarchy of Champagne bottles.

Magnum ammunition

Lindsay Lohan in habit with Smith & Wesson .500 Magnum, Machete (2010).

Released in September 2010 at the Venice Film Festival and distributed internationally by Sony Pictures, Machete would probably be more highly regarded if the full-length feature had lived up to the promise created by the artfully-edited trailer.  Probably about twenty minutes too long, the critical consensus suggests Machete was a violent, shallow, repetitive and probably unnecessary addition to whatever was the sub-genre of exploitation it inhabited.  That said, the production values were thought high enough for those who like this sort of thing to be able to look forward to it as one of the more enjoyable movies of the summer of 2010.

Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum.

A magnum cartridge is one with a larger case size than the standard cartridge of the same calibre and case shoulder shape.  The now generic term is derived from Smith & Wesson’s Original .357 S&W Magnum, introduced in 1934; magnum ammunition containing either or both additional propellant or a heavier projectile but the term is a bit of an anomaly in the business of ballistics.  Although in the terminology of firearms, most jargon is explicitly defined, “magnum ammunition” has no precise codified set of standards, instead being just an indication of the possession of more powerful characteristics than other loads of the same calibre and shape.  One revolver which has found a niche is the .22 Magnum.  Although in the public imagination it lurks behind the bigger calibre loads (.357, .44, .50), it's a practical device which can use the .22 LR (Long Rifle) shell and manufacturers offer them with a cylinder capacity of 10 or 12, more than many semi-automatics.  Retailers recommend them for non-expert shooters because with a minimal recoil when firing, they're easy to handle and the rule is it’s better to have a .22 LR that hits its target than a .44 Magnum that misses it. 

Smith & Wesson .500 Magnum.

Smith & Wesson’s original .357 Magnum was introduced in 1934 in response to the growing availability of bullet-proofing technology in both automobiles and the ballistics vests used for personal protection.  It was an attempt to provide greater penetrative power without the need to increase the bore with the consequential increase in the size and weight of weapons.  Predictably though, the arms race had begun, and in the decades which followed, magnum loads would become available for a wide range of calibres, hand guns and long arms as well as shotguns, the classic .44 Magnum, later made famous in popular culture, released in 1954.  It didn’t stop there, increasing demand for the .44 convincing Smith & Wesson to develop the .500 Magnum, currently the most powerful handgun load generally available and one marketed, in addition to its other attractions, to those who might find it more convenient than a rifle for hunting big game.  The size, weight and recoil however mean it’s not suitable for all and in the US, .500 is anyway the legal limit for handgun loads.  In US law, it’s a rare restriction.

.460 Weatherby Magnum.

For that reason, even Smith and Wesson do recommend that unless one plans to hunt elephant at close range or expect to confront a charging wild boar, loads like the .357 Magnum are better for what most people do most of the time.  The same caution applies to the Magnum loads for rifles, the .375 Magnum often nominated by experts as the perfect compromise for all but the most extreme applications.  Indeed, it was loads like the .375 Magnum which eliminated most of the need for the famous old-style “elephant guns” like Holland & Holland’s .600 Nitro and the .458 and .460 Magnum cartridges of the 1950s were necessitated only by regulations governing big-game hunting in Africa mandating a load above .400.  Despite that, demand for the heavy calibres remains strong, Holland and Holland, after introducing a canon-like .700 Nitro found demand so unexpectedly strong that they resumed production of the long retired .600.  While it seems unlikely heavier loads will be thought practical, that may not matter, there being some evidence many of the .700 Nitros are sold to collectors, never to be fired.

That said, Austria’s Pfeifer firearms created supply to meet what demand there may be.  The Pfeifer .600 Nitro Express Zeliska single-action revolver weighs over 13 lb (4.85 kg) and is  22 inches (.56 m) in length, the cylinder section alone weighing 4.5 lb (17 kg).  Although generating a muzzle energy of 7,591 foot pounds (33.7 kn), paradoxically, the weight of the gun actually limits the recoil, making controlled shooting possible although, practice is essential.  With a cylinder capacity of either five .600 Nitro or .458 Winchester Magnum rounds, it's able to fire a 900 grain, .600 some 2000 feet (600+ m).  At release, Zeliska listed the revolver at US$17,316 and because each .600 Nitro Express round costs about US$45, it’s an expensive hobby.

The Magnum Concilium

Dating from Norman times, the Magnum Concilium (Great Council) was an English assembly eventually composed of senior ecclesiastics, noblemen and representatives of the counties of England and Wales (and later of the boroughs too) which was from time-to-time convened to discuss matter of state with the king and his advisors (sitting as the Curia Regis (King's Court; a kind of predecessor to the Privy Council and later the cabinet).  The Magnum Concilium evolved into the Concilium Regis in Parliamento (the parliament of England), the first generally thought to be the so-called "Model Parliament" of 1295, which included archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, barons, and representatives of the shires and boroughs.  The evolution wasn’t linear, power in the land a constant struggle between king and parliament, the authority of both fluctuating as the politics of the day effed and flowed.  Nor was the parliament a united force, shrewd kings knowing how to exploit divisions between the parliamentary factions but by the reign of Edward II (1284-1327; as Edward of Caernarfon, King of England 1307-1327), the nobility was ascendant, the Crown compliant and the rest essentially irrelevant.

Execution Of Charles I, 1649 (circa 1850) by an unknown artist.

Under Edward III (1312–1377; as Edward of Windsor, King of England 1327-1377), the modern bicameral structure (a House of Commons & a House of Lords), became clear and the authority of Parliament grew although the Lords remained by far the most powerful because that was where the economic resources were concentrated.  That reality was reflected by the practice, under the Plantagenet kings, of the summoning of the Magnum Concilium being something exclusively ecclesiastical & aristocratic, the representatives of the commons rarely in attendance.  After Henry VII (1457–1509; King of England 1485-1509) convened the Magnum Concilium on several occasions in the late 1400s, for various reasons, its participation in the governance of England went into abeyance until, in 1640, Charles I was advised to summon the Magnum Concilium after he’d dissolved the Short Parliament in order to raise money because his misrule and wars of adventure had bankrupted the state.  The king got his money but his private army was soon at war with the parliamentary forces of both Scotland and England and those wars did not for him go well.  Before the decade was over, he would be beheaded.  The Magnum Concilium has not since met but experts in English constitutional law have confirmed it still exists and can, at any time, be summoned by the Crown.

Chrysler’s 440 Magnum Six-Pack

383 Magnum V8 with cross-ram induction in in 1960 Dodge Dart Phoenix D-500.

Chrysler’s family of big-block wedge V8s lasted from 1958 until 1978 but, although the label is often commonly applied, not all were designated “Magnum”.  The first Magnum was a high-performance version of the B-series 383 cubic inch (6.3 litre) V8 (which differs from the later RB 383), the highlight being the option of a (long) cross-ram inlet manifold with two four-barrel carburetors.  It was only Dodge which used the Magnum label; the equivalent power-plant in a Plymouth was called a Commando (there were adjectives sometimes added) and in a Chrysler, a TNT.

1970 Dodge 440 Magnum Six-Pack.

Introduced in 1969, the highest evolution of the RB Magnum were the 440 cubic inch (7.2 litre) versions built with three Holley 2300 series two-barrel carburetors instead of the more commonly seen single carburetor induction (which were on the 440 almost exclusively in four-barrel form).  The early versions used an Edelbrock manifold cast in aluminum but supply difficulties forced Chrysler also to cast their own in cast-iron to meet demand.  Although obviously a high-performance variation, marketed by Dodge as the 440 Magnum Six-Pack, the engine was engineered to use only the centre 250 cubic feet per minute (7 m³) carburetor under normal throttle loads, the outer two 370 cfm (10.4 m³) units used only if summoned (something like the "demand" superchargers on Weimar-era Mercedes-Benz, the kompressor activated only when the throttle was pushed wide-open, high in the rev range).  If one could resist the temptation of the sudden onrush of power, the Magnum Six-Pack could be quite economical by the admittedly slight standards of the time, simply because, when driven with restraint, it was percolating along with only the one two-barrel carburetor active.

440 Magnum Six-Pack in 1970 Dodge Challenger.

Internally, the Six-Pack Magnums differed from the single carburetor engines in the use of stiffer valve springs borrowed from the 426 Street Hemi, stronger rocker arms (strengthened connecting rods were added in 1970), molybdenum-filled piston rings and flash chromed valves (which is why simply adding the six-pack induction system to a standard 440 can end badly).  Better to cope with the additional stresses imposed by those high-tension springs, the camshaft lobes and lifter faces were blueprinted to equalise the loads, the lifters rotating to distribute wear equally across the surfaces subject to friction.  With its compression ratio upped from 10.1:1 to 10.5:1, upon release, the Magnum Six-Pack was rated at 390 bhp (290 kw), dropping slightly to 385 (287) when some minor anti-emission adjustments were made in 1971.  At around half the price of Chrysler’s much-vaunted Street-Hemi adaptation of the race engine, the Magnum Six-Pack was a bargain, at least matching the Hemi in most aspects of performance until speeds above 120 mph (190 km/h) were attained, along with a longer manufacturer’s warranty and lower insurance costs, at least for some.  It was good while it lasted but in the US, 1971 was the swansong for both the Magnum Six-Pack and the Street-Hemi, emission regulations and an astonishing increase in the cost of insuring the things crushing demand.

1971 Jensen FF Series III, one of 15 made from a total production (1966-1971) of 320.

Across the Atlantic however, the Six-Pack Magnum did enjoy a brief afterlife after being driven extinct in the US.  Jensen, in the throes of phasing out their acclaimed but unprofitable all-wheel-drive FF, were looking for a flagship which could be created quickly and cheaply, ruling out the mooted convertible which wouldn’t appear for some years.  With their planned new F-Type unlikely to be on sale before 1973, the need was for something which demanded neither much development time nor an onerous budget.  As it was, circumstances contrived to ensure the F-Type was stillborn after a single prototype was built.

The much admired louvers on 1972 Jensen SP.  So much did the look appeal a louvered bonnet (hood) of a slightly different design was later made available on the standard Interceptor.

Jensen had for years been building their Interceptor & FF models with the Chrysler RB engines and had even flirted with the idea of doing a run with the Street Hemi, a project aborted when the costs of adaptation became apparent.  In late 1970, Jensen’s need for something was communicated to Chrysler which, by happy coincidence, had a batch of Magnum Six-Pack engines which had been gathering dust in a Canadian warehouse since being effectively orphaned by the new US emission control legislation.  Within days, agreement was reached, Jensen taking delivery of the first tranche of the batch which, although unable to be sold in the US, were legal just about everywhere else.  The mechanical specification settled, discussions then turned to other features which could be included to enhance the car’s status as a premium product.  Because it was the 1970s (and there's really no other excuse), without much discussion, it was agreed to glue on a vinyl roof; that many others did the same thing is no defense but it wasn't obligatory; of the 232 SPs, there were 185 with a black vinyl roof, 15 in tan, two in white while three subversives ordered the "Duotone" paint option with the roof painted a contrasting color.  More defensible was the inclusion of a high-quality and very expensive Learjet eight-track cartridge stereo system and, to provide some continuity with the FF, it was decided to use that model’s blue-themed badges rather than the red used on the Interceptor.  Also, interestingly, it was during these initial discussions that a fully louvered bonnet (hood) would be included in the specification but there’s no indication there was any concern about additional engine-bay heat, the louvers apparently just a styling device to evoke memories of earlier eras when they were common on high-performance machinery.  There was little debate about the name; several people had suggested SP was the obvious choice.  In December 1970, the first prototype SP was built although the intricacies of the triple carburetor engine weren’t entirely new to Jensen’s engineers, having a few months earlier fitted one to an Interceptor.  Assessment of the prototype proved the adaptation was as straight-forward as expected, the minor issue of the additional clearance demanded by the big air-filter effected by a quick fix to the filter housing.

1971 Jensen SP at the Geneva Motor Show, March 1972.  Just twelve were built in left-hand drive configuration because the SP engine couldn't meet the new US emission standards, thereby precluding sales in the market most receptive to thirsty machines.

Scheduled for release in the northern autumn of 1971, Jensen’s original plan had been to announce the SP as part of their new range including the Mark III versions of both the Interceptor and FF but the realities of the future made apparent the mixed-messaging was a bad idea.  The SP was intended to be the new top-of-the line model so announcing it with an updated version of the doomed yet still more expensive FF made little sense, the Mark III FF created only as a way to ensure the last fifteen FF body-shells (the all-wheel drive configuration necessitated a longer wheelbase) could be utilised.  Almost all FF marketing was thus terminated and the emphasis switched to the new two-model range with the SP sitting atop which meant the Mark III FF, which would become one of the Jensens most prized by collectors, went at the time almost unnoticed.

1972 Monteverdi 375/4.

Beginning its tour of the motor show circuit, the new flagship was greeted with subdued interest by the motoring press which viewed the SP as the hot rod Interceptor it was and which, while entertaining in a occasionally brutish (and rather un-Jensen like) sort of way, was not as intriguing as the soon-to-be lamented FF, the prowess of which had so astonished all who drove it, exploring for the first time the revolutionary possibilities of anti-lock braking and all-wheel-drive.  Nevertheless, the performance did impress, a top-speed of 143 mph (230 km/h) being reported although it was noted the even bigger and heavier 375/4 limousine made by boutique Swiss manufacturer Monteverdi had been clocked just a little faster and it used the 440 with only a single four barrel carburetor.  Still it was fast enough and nobody complained the SP lacked pace.

Jensen SP press release, 5 October 1971.

What did elicit complaint was the manner in which that speed sometimes arrived.  The tremendous delivery of power at full-throttle was praised but the lack of predictable response lower in the rev-range attracted criticism, the additional carburetors kicking in sometimes unexpectedly and not always when the car was heading in a straight line.  Issues with hot-starting were also apparent and even the otherwise much admired multi-louvered bonnet was found not the be without fault, the slats apparently changing either the properties of the metal or the reaction of the shape to the fluid dynamics of air-flow; at speed, the bonnet would “slightly shiver, almost as though improperly fastened” and testers, used to the cocoon-like stability of the Interceptor and FF, found it disconcerting.  While none of the reviews were damning, nor were they much more than polite.  Surprisingly, the only mention testers made of the standard air-conditioning (A/C) was that it worked well but it deserved a longer note because Jensen was the only factory which fitted A/C to a triple-carburetor 440, Plymouth & Dodge in the US never offering the option.  Monteverdi enjoys a similar distinction, it's Hai (two of which were built in 1971 & 1973) the only vehicle powered by Chrysler's 426 cubic inch (7.0 litre) Street Hemi V8 to have factory fitted A/C.

1972 Jensen SP engine bay.

Worse was to come as customers started reporting problems, the first being the issue of under-bonnet heat.  Although a big machine by European standards, the engine bay of the Jensen was smaller than anything to which it’d been fitted in the US and, even with the louvers helping to ventilate the space, it got very hot in there and this quickly affected the carburetors which had never before been exposed to such extremes; parts warping as the metal heated and then cooled, causing air-gaps to emerge, making accurate tuning, vital with multiple-carburetion, impossible.  The factory was soon receiving reports of engines which refused to idle and, due to the inherent nature of the Holly 2300 carburetor design, engines would run too rich after a week or so of nothing more than normal driving.

Chocolate fiend Lindsay Lohan with Magnum (ice cream) backdrop.

For a small company like Jensen, it was a major setback.  The company had built the Interceptor's reputation on reliability and ease of ownership essentially by piggy-backing on the back of the bullet proof Chrysler V8s and TorqueFlite transmissions it had begun using in the Interceptor's predecessor, the CV8.  The approach, adopted by many in this era, appealed to buyers not sufficiently seduced by the bespoke charm and mechanical intricacies of the continental competition to wish to deal with the cost and inconvenience of the more demanding maintenance schedules (and expensive parts catalogue) listed by Ferrari, Lamborghini & Maserati.  Like the MGA Twin-Cam (and for that matter the later Jensen-Healey), the SP was a classic case of insufficient product development and testing, examples of which littered the post-war UK industry.  Perhaps there was complacency because (1) multiple carburetors were nothing new to British manufacturers and (2) the Six-Pack Magnum had a good record of reliability in the US.  However, three Hollys on a big-block Chrysler turned out to behave differently to three big SUs on a Jaguar XK-six.                  

1970 Dodge Super Bee 440 Magnum Six-Pack with typical girlfriend of typical buyer.

The occasional quirk of the Magnum Six-Pack was not unknown in the US but there the nature of the thing was well-understood; it was a hot-rod engine bought by those who wanted such things, most owners young, male, mechanically adept and often anxious to tinker under the hood (bonnet).  The Jensen buyer was a wholly different demographic, mostly older, affluent men who either had rarely seen under a bonnet or hadn’t looked for many years and their expectations of a car which was twice as expensive as Jaguar’s V12 E-Type were very different to those youthful Californian baby boomers had of their hotted-up taxi cabs.  Used to the effortless, if thirsty, behavior of the Interceptor, some found their SPs, the high-performance of which most could rarely explore, were behaving like brand new, very expensive old clunkers.

Jensen FF with typical mistress of typical buyer.  This is not a period photograph but is English model Harriadnie Beau Phipps (b 1993) in a 2014 photo-shoot for Oxfordshire-based UK operation Bavarez which specialized in restoring & modifying Interceptors. 

Weeks of testing and experiments with all sorts of adjustments proved pointless.  In Jensen’s workshops it was always possible to produce a perfectly running SP but, after sometimes as little as a week in the hands of owner, it would be back, displaying the same symptoms and in the end, Jensen admitted defeat and offered the only solution guaranteed to work: remove the triple induction system and replace it with the Interceptor’s faithful Carter Thermoquad four barrel carburetor.  That alleviated all the drivability issues but did mean that having paid their £6,976.87, a premium of a thousand-odd pounds over the anyway expensive Interceptor, the emasculated SP became an Interceptor with a vinyl roof, an eight-track cartridge player and a vibrating bonnet.  The factory’s records suggest between a quarter and a third of buyers opted for the Theromquad fix and some refunds were paid to the especially unhappy.

Last gasp: 1974 Jensen Interceptor convertible.

Although Jensen had known, because the Magnum Six-Pack was out of production, the SP was not going to have a long life, it had been hoped it would fulfil its role until the new F-Type was expected to be released in 1973.  However, having built 208 SPs, Jensen didn’t take up their option on what was still in Chrysler’s Canadian remainder bin and, once the stock already delivered was exhausted, the SP was allowed quietly to die.  Between September 1971 and July 1973, 231 Jensen SPs were completed with one final example built in October, a special order from someone who really wanted one.   

1972 Jensen-Healey publicity shot.

It was the start of a run of bad luck that would doom also the Interceptor and the entire company: (1) Development issues would beset the F-Type which would never see the light of day, (2) the Jensen-Healey (1972-1976) sports car which had seemed so promising turned into an expensive flop and (3) the first oil shock in 1973 rendered the Interceptor and many of its ilk suddenly big, thirsty dinosaurs and not even the release in 1974 of a much-admired convertible version could rescue things.  Bankruptcy loomed and by 1976 the end came.  However, flawed but charismatic English cars, decades on, sometimes enjoy second acts and SPs are now much prized with a small industry devoted to restoring them to their six-barreled glory, modern materials and techniques of insulation & cooling now able to transform them into something as well-behaved as any Interceptor.

Tranche

Tranche (pronounced trahnch, trahnsh, or trahnsh (French))

(1) One part or division of a larger unit; a slice, section or portion.

(2) A group of securities that share a certain characteristic and form part of a larger offering.

(3) Any part, division, or instalment.

(4) In finance, to divide into parts, applied especially to loans and share issues.

(5) In insurance, a distinct subdivision of a single policyholder's benefits, typically relating to separate premium increments.

(6) In pensions, a scheme's or scheme member's benefits relating to distinct accrual periods with different rules.

1400s: From the French tranche, (a cutting (literally, “a slice”)), a form of trancher (to cut, to slice), from Old French trenchier, trancher & trancher (cut, make a cut), possibly from the Vulgar Latin trinicāre (cut in three parts). It was cognate with the English trench.  The specific uses in economics and finance didn’t emerge until 1930.  The form in Modern French is tranché (feminine tranchée, masculine plural tranchés, feminine plural tranchées), the past participle of trancher (clear-cut, marked, bold, distinct (and in heraldry: per bend)).  Tranche is a noun & verb and tranched & tranching are verbs; the noun plural is tranches.

Tranches in a collateralised debt structure.

Tranche has become so associated with matters financial that the word is now seldom used in other contexts, probably a good thing given it’s likely only to confuse.  In finance, a tranche is a portion of a security (loans, mortgages, stocks, bonds etc) that can be packaged for sale to investors; Securities are broken to be reassembled in different forms for a number of reasons, the most obvious of which is to make them easier to sell.  Because investors base their decision to purchase on factors such as risk, time and the quality of asset backing, tranches prepared for sale vary in the emphasis placed on these factors to attract buyers with different priorities.

Slicing the cake.

Since the global financial crisis (GFC) began in 2008, the perception probably is that packaging is most associated with residential mortgages, the money banks and others loan to people to buy houses as homes or investments.  That’s not entirely true but it has been a big part of the market.  Typically, mortgages are repaid over fifteen to thirty years but the lenders prefer to churn, banks, rather than waiting decades to get the money, on-sell mortgages to investors, thereby gaining the funds to lend for more mortgages.  Because of the limited number of number of investors, individuals and institutional, willing to buy thirty year mortgages, banks create tranches, some including the first three years of each mortgage, some the five years while a few will run for the whole term.

This spread of products appeals to a spread-out market.  Some investors will prefer the low-risk tranche of three-year mortgages and accept the lower interest rate while others will opt for the riskier long-term tranche, attracted by the higher rate.  Tranching is thus a device which maintains the liquidity of the loan pool and provides a differentiated securities market in which investors can adjust their exposure according to their own risk versus reward calculation.

Pick your tranche; you pay your money, you take your choice.

The particular, celebrated case of the sub-prime mortgage crisis which began to manifest in 2008-2009 involved mostly tranches of CMOs (collateralized mortgage obligations) and the problems then were not a product of the structural design of tranching but the quality of what was being tranched.  Essentially, like many of the periodic crises in capitalism, the GFC was triggered by over-production.  The traditional mortgage market consisted of borrowers judged to be capable of repaying the loan but, various things having combined to mean the lenders had run out of them, they resorted to lending to people who would never be able to repay.  That required some clever contractual engineering to ensure (1) the credit-rating agencies would grant investment-grade ratings to what were junk securities so (2) the risk would be quickly on-sold.  The rationale for all of this was that the tranching was done in such a way that the spread of the risk was so diversified that whatever defaults occurred would present no systemic threat.  There are interesting stories about (1) & (2).

Lots lost lots in the GFC but there were also quite a number who made much and very quickly.  So profitable for those few in the right place at the right time was the loaning of money to those with no capacity to repay that it’s hard to believe it won’t, at scale, happen again and there are suggestions it may be happening now.  The unusual combination of borrowing at historically high multiples against static or falling incomes for assets at historically high valuations has happened in an era of historically low interest rates.  Movements downwards in asset values or upwards in interest rates will have a multiplier effect on each-other and those movements, if sufficient, will essentially render much mortgage debt functionally sub-prime and there were those who predicted the extraordinary increase in the global money-supply playing out this way.

The headline in the French language which in 2016 announced: Lindsay Lohan s'est tranché le doigt en deux (Lindsay Lohan sliced her finger in half).

Actually "sliced her finger in half" was a bit sensationalist (one might even say Anglo-Saxon style click-bait).  In October 2016, during an Aegean cruise, there was a nautical incident, the tip of one of her fingers severed by the boat's anchor chain but details of the circumstances are sketchy.  It may be that upon hearing the captain give the command “weigh anchor”, she decided to help but, lacking any background in admiralty terms and phrases, misunderstood the instruction.  The detached piece of digit was salvaged from the deck and ashore, soon re-attached by micro-surgery.  Digit and the rest of the patient are said to have made full recoveries, something especially significant because it was the ring finger which was “tranched” but, thanks to the surgeon’s skill in fixing the gruesome injury, she managed later to find husband and the finger now displays engagement and wedding rings.  All’s well that ends well.

Satellite

Satellite (pronounced sat-l-ahyt)

(1) In astronomy, celestial body orbiting around a planet or star; a moon.

(2) In geopolitics, as “satellite state”, a country under the domination or influence of another.

(3) Something (a county, sub-national state, office, building campus etc), under the jurisdiction, influence, or domination of another entity; Subordinate to another authority, outside power, or the like (also known as a “satellite operation”, “satellite campus”, “satellite workshop” etc).

(4) An attendant or follower of another person, often subservient or obsequious in manner; a follower, supporter, companion, associate; lackey, parasite, sycophant, toady, flunky; now used usually in the derogatory sense of “a henchman” although, applied neutrally, it can be used of someone’s retinue or entourage (and even the machinery of a motorcade).

(5) A man-made device orbiting a celestial body (the earth, a moon, or another planet etc) and transmitting scientific information or used for communication; among astronomers and others form whom the distinction matters, man-made devices are sometimes referred to as “artificial satellites” to distinguish them for natural satellites such as the Earth’s Moon.  The standard abbreviation is “sat” and the situation in which a satellite is hit by some object while in orbit (which at the velocities involved can be unfortunate) is called a “sat-hit”.

(6) As “derelict satellite”, a man-made device (including the spent upper-stages of rockets) in orbit around a celestial body which has ceased to function.

(7) In medicine, a short segment of a chromosome separated from the rest by a constriction, typically associated with the formation of a nucleolus.

(8) In biology, a colony of microorganisms whose growth in culture medium is enhanced by certain substances produced by another colony in its proximity.

(9) In formal grammar, a construct that takes various forms and may encode a path of movement, a change of state, or the grammatical aspect (highly technical descriptor no longer used in most texts).

(10) In television, as satellite TV, the transmission and reception of television broadcasts (and used also in narrowcasting) using satellites in low-earth orbit.

(11) In the military terminology of Antiquity, a guard or watchman.

(12) In entomology, as satellite moth, the Eupsilia transversa, a moth of the family Noctuidae.

1540-1550: From the fourteenth century Middle French satellite, from the Medieval Latin satellitem (accusative singular of satelles) (attendant upon a distinguished person or office-holder, companion, body-guard. courtier, accomplice, assistant), from the Latin satelles, from the Old Latin satro (enough, full) + leyt (to let go) and listed usually as akin to the English “follow” although the association is undocumented.  Although the Latin origin is generally accepted, etymologists have pondered a relationship with the Etruscan, either satnal (klein) (again linked to the English “follow”) or a compound of roots: satro- (full; enough) + leit- (to go) (the English “follow” constructed of similar roots).  Satellite is a noun, verb & adjective and satellitic & satellitious are adjectives; the noun plural is satellites.  Satellitious (pertaining to, or consisting of, satellites) is listed by most dictionaries as archaic but is probably the best form to use in a derogatory sense, best expressed in the comparative (more satellitious) or the superlative (most satellitious).

Lindsay Lohan promoting the Sick Note series, TV & Satellite Week magazine, 21-27 July 2018.

The adjectival use is applied as required and this has produced many related terms including satellite assembly (use of committees or deliberative bodies created by a superior authority), satellite broadcasting (in this context distinguished from transmissions using physical (point-to-point) cables or ground-based relays), satellite campus, satellite DNA (in genetics, an array in  tandem of repeating, non-coding DNA), satellite-framing (in linguistics, the use of a grammatical satellite to indicate a path of motion, a change of state or grammatical aspect (as opposed to a verb framing)), satellite navigation (the use of electronic positioning systems which use data from satellites (often now as “SatNav”)) and satellite station (either (1) as ground-base facility used for monitoring or administrating satellites or (2) a manned facility in orbit such as the ISS (International Space Station)), satellite telephone (telephony using satellites as a transmission vector)

Sputnik, 1957

Sputnik 1 blueprint, 1957.

The original sense in the 1540s was "a follower or attendant of a superior person" but this use was rare before the late eighteenth century and it seemed to have taken until the 1910s before it was applied in a derogatory manner to suggest "an accomplice or accessory in crime or other nefarious activity” although the Roman statesman Cicero (Marcus Tullius Cicero, 106-43 BC) often used the Latin form in this way.  In the seventeenth century, as telescopes became available, the idea was extended to what was then thought to be "a planet revolving about a larger one" on the notion of "an attendant", initially a reference to the moons of Jupiter.  In political theory, the “satellite state” was first described in 1800, coined by John Adams (1735-1826; US president 1797-1801) in a discussion about the United States and its relationships with the other nations of the Americas although in geopolitics the term is most identified with the “buffer states”, the members of the Warsaw Pact which were within Moscow’s sphere of influence.  The familiar modern meaning of a "man-made machine orbiting the Earth" actually dates (as scientific conjecture) from 1936, something realized (to the surprise of most) in 1957 when the USSR launched Sputnik 1.  Sputnik was from the Russian спу́тник (sputnik) (satellite (literally "travelling companion” and in this context a shortened form of sputnik zemlyi (travelling companion of the Earth), from the Old Church Slavonic supotiniku, the construct being the Russian so- (as “s-“ (with, together)) + пу́тник (pútnik) (traveller), from путь (put) (way, path, journey) (from the Old Church Slavonic poti, from the primitive Indo-European pent- (to tread, go)) + ник (-nik) (the agent suffix).

Soviet Sputnik postcard, 1957.

The launch of Sputnik shocked the American public which, in a milieu of jet aircraft, televisions and macropterous Cadillacs, had assumed their country was in all ways technologically superior to their Cold War enemy.  Launched into an elliptical low-Earth orbit, Sputnik was about twice the size of a football (soccer ball) and it orbited for some three more months before falling towards earth, the on-board batteries lasting long enough for it to broadcast radio pulses for the first three weeks, transmissions detectable almost anywhere on earth.  It sounds now a modest achievement but it needs to be regarded as something as significant as the Wright Flyer in 1903 travelling 200 feet (61 m), at an altitude of some 10 feet (3 m) and in the West the social and political impact was electrifying.  There were also linguistic ripples because, just as a generation later the Watergate scandal would trigger the –gate formations (which continue to this day), it wasn’t long before the –nik prefix (which had actually been a part of Yiddish word creation for at least a decade) gained popularity.  Laika, the doomed stray dog launched aboard Sputnik 2 in November 1957 was dubbed muttnik (although the claims it was the first living thing in space have since been disproved because "living" entities were both on board the Nazi V2 rockets (1944-1945) which often briefly entered the stratosphere and have long been present in the upper atmosphere where they’re ejected into space by natural atmospheric processes) while the early US satellites (quickly launched to display the nation’s scientific prowess) failed which gave the press the chance to coin kaputnik, blowupnik, dudnik, flopnik, pffftnik & stayputnik.

Sputnik 1's launch vehicle (left), the satellite as it orbited the earth (centre) and in expanded form (right. 

Although not a great surprise to either the White House or the better-informed in the Pentagon, the American public was shocked and both the popular and quality press depicted Sputnik’s success as evidence of Soviet technological superiority, stressing the military implications.    This trigged the space race and soon created the idea of the “missile gap” which would be of such significance in the 1960 presidential election and, although by the early 1960s the Pentagon knew the gap was illusory, the arms race continued and the count of missiles and warheads actually peaked in the early 1970s.  It also began a new era of military, technological, and scientific developments, leading most obviously to the moon landing in 1969 but research groups developed weapons such as the big inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and missile defence systems as well as spy satellites.  Satellites were another step in the process of technology being deployed to improve communications.  When Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865; US president 1861-1865) was assassinated in 1865, the news didn’t reach Europe until the fastest ship crossed the Atlantic a fortnight later.  By the time of William McKinley's (1843–1901; US president 1897-1901) assassination in 1901, the news travelled around the world by undersea cables within minutes.  In 1963, while news of John Kennedy's (JFK, 1917–1963; US president 1961-1963) death was close to a global real-time event, those thousands of miles from the event had to wait sometimes 24 hours or more to view footage, delivered in canisters byu land' sea or air.  By 1981, when an attempt was made to take Ronald Reagan's (1911-life, television feeds around the planet were within minutes picking up live-feeds from satellites.

Two comrades with their 1960 Trabant P50 in stylish two-tone pastellblau (pastel blue) over creme (cream) admiring the Leipzig Opera building, Saxony, circa 1961 (left) and a 1990 Trabant 601 in a by then more typical beige (right).

In the GDR (German Democratic Republic, the old East Germany), the long-running (1957-1991) Trabant's bodywork was made with Duroplast, a composite thermosetting plastic (and a descendant of Bakelite).  It was a resin plastic reinforced with fibres (the GDR used waste from both cotton & wool processing) which structurally was similar to fibreglass although the urban myth Trabants were made from reinforced cardboard persists.  The first Trabants left the Saxony production line in November 1957, only weeks after the Soviet Union had startled the world by launching Sputnik and while the first man-made Earth satellite did nothing other than transmit radio pulses, the significance was that was something which had never before been done and, launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit where it circulated for three months, because of the flight path, the little sphere's "beeps" could at various times be detected just about anywhere below.  Compared with what space programmes would become, it sounds now a modest achievement but was at the time a sensation and the event which triggered the “space race”.

Two comrades approaching their 1957 Trabant P50 in stylish korallenrot (coral red) over creme (cream).  Note the amber turn signals; Trabants were factory-fitted with flashers at a time Rolls-Royce and other manufacturers in the “advanced West” were still installing antiquated semaphores.

In the Eastern Bloc there weren’t many marketing departments but there was a vast propaganda apparatus and opportunistically, the name Trabant was derived from the Middle High German drabant (satellite; companion; foot soldier) which at the time was a positive association with the famous Sputnik but it later became emblematic of the economic and moral bankruptcy of the whole communist project: While by the fall of the Berlin Wall (1961-1989) Soviet satellites and related technologies greatly had advanced, the “Trubi” remained a little changed “1957 time capsule”.  Although much despised in the early 1990s in the aftermath of the break-up of the Soviet Union (1922-1991), opinions softened and the survivors of the more than three million produced (a greater volume than BMC's (British Motor Corporation) Mini (1959-2000)) gained a cult following.  More correctly, the marque gained a number of cult followings, some attracted by the “retro-cuteness”, some with genuine, Putinesque nostalgia for the old Soviet system and other with a variety of projects as varied as EV (electric vehicle) conversions, the installation of V8s for drag-racing and the re-purposing in many forms of competition.  The Trubi is now a fixture in the lower reaches (a notch above the Austin Allegro) of the collector market.

Low-emission Trabant (rated at 1 PP (pony-power)) with driver using semaphore signal to indicate intention to turn left, Barnim district, Bernau bei, Berlin, GDR, 1981.

As late as the 1960s, in some places, trucks & vans still were being built with a hand-operated semaphore mounted on the driver’s door and specialized vehicles likely also to have an occupant on the passenger-side (such as fire-engines) sometimes had two.  If need be they could also be improvised, as in the low-tech “lollipop” sign being used in this image of a two-seater buggy, a vehicle crafted using the salvageable section of a Trabant which may have suffered frontal damage in a crash.  Trabants really could go fast enough to have damaging crashes and although not engineered with the “crumple zones” which were introduced in the West as a way of absorbing an impact’s energy before it reached the occupants, in their own way, crumple Trabants did.  The photograph of the horse-drawn Trubi, while not representative of the entire Eastern Bloc experience under communist rule, captures a sight which would not have been uncommon away from large urban centres (which could be grim enough).  Dr Henry Kissinger (1923-2023; US national security advisor 1969-1975 & secretary of state 1937-1977) said his abiding memory of Eastern Bloc cities was of “the smell of boiled cabbage and an unrelenting greyness.”  In fairness, English cooks probably inflicted worse on the noble cabbage than anything done behind the Iron Curtain but his sense of “greyness” was literal, the appalling air pollution of the GDR (its industrial base powered by burning lignite (from the Latin lignum (wood)) and other forms of low-grade, “dirty coal”), thus the griminess of the buildings.  Places like London similarly were affected and it was only after the 1952 “Great Smog of London” that the Clean Air Act (1956) became law, meaning air quality began slowly to improve.  That the photographs of the era look so drab was not because of the film stock; buildings literally were “dirty”.  Because of various other advances in health care, it’s difficult to quantify the contribution to reducing mortality achieved by reducing air pollution but few doubt it was significant.

The Plymouth Satellites

1967 Plymouth Satellite convertible.

Chrysler's Plymouth division introduced the Satellite on the corporation's intermediate ("B") platform in 1965 as the most expensive trim-option for the Belvedere line.  Offered initially only with two-door hardtop and convertible coach-work, the range of body-styles was later expanded to encompass four-door sedans and station wagons.  In a manner, typical of the way the industry applied their nomenclature as marketing devices to entice buyers, the Belvedere name was in 1970 retired while Satellite remained the standard designation until it too was dropped after 1974.

1970 Plymouth Road Runner, 440 6 Barrel.

Were it not for it being made available in 1966 with the 426 cubic inch (7.0 litre) Street Hemi V8, the Belvedere and Satellite would have been just another intermediate but with that option, it was transformed into a (slightly) detuned race-car which one could register for the road, something possible in those happier times.  The Street Hemi was an expensive option and relatively few were built but the demand for high-performance machinery was clear so in 1968, Plymouth released the Road Runner, complete with logos (licensed from the Warner Brothers film studio for US$50,000) and a “beep beep” horn which reputedly cost US$10,000 to develop.  The object was to deliver a high-performance machine at the lowest possible cost so the Road Runner used the basic (two-door, pillared) body shell and eschewed niceties like carpet or bucket seats, the only addition of note a tuned version of the 383 cubic inch (6.3 litre) V8 engine; for those who wanted more, the Street Hemi was optional.  Plymouth set what they thought were ambitious sales targets but demand was such production had to be doubled and the response encouraged the usual proliferation: a hardtop coupé and convertible soon rounding out the range.

1970 Plymouth Hemi Road Runner Superbird.

The option list later expanded to include the six-barrel version which used the of the 440 cubic inch (7.2 litre) V8, a much cheaper choice than the Street Hemi and one which (usually) displayed better manners on the street while offering similar performance until travelling well over 100 mph (160 km/h) although it couldn't match the Hemi’s sustained delivery of top-end power which, with the right gearing, would deliver a top speed in excess of 150 mph (240 km/h), something of little significance to most.  However, by the early 1970s sales were falling.  The still embryonic safety and emission legislation played a small part in this but overwhelmingly the cause was the extraordinary rise in insurance premiums being charged for the high-performance vehicles, something which disproportionately affected the very buyers at which the machines were targeted: single males aged 19-29.  However, the platform endured long enough to provide the basis for the Road Runner Superbird, a “homologation special” produced in limited numbers to qualify the frankly extreme aerodynamic modifications for use in competition.  At the time, the additions were too radical for some buyers with dealers unable to find buyers forced to convert the things back to standard specifications just to shift them from their lots.  They’re now prized collectables, the relatively few with the Street Hemi especially sought.

As a footnote, corporate stablemate Dodge called their six barrel 440s the "Six Pack" (which was a much snappier name) and in the UK this was in 1972 picked up by Jensen which was able to buy (at a bargain price) a tranche of the engines Chrysler had stored in a warehouse after US emission regulations rendered them unlawful for road-registered passenger vehicles.  Jensen called the model created the "Interceptor SP" but it proved an unfortunate experience for both company and customers for while the engine delivered a lift in performance, for a variety of reasons it was, in that configuration, not suitable for the car (or its target market) and a number had to be converted to use the standard Interceptor's single four barrel carburetor.  Its brief existence did though produce something for the automotive trivia buffs: While the accepted orthodoxy is "the factory never installed air-conditioning (AC) in any car fitted with the six barrel 440s or the Street Hemi", strictly speaking that applies only to "No Chrysler factory ever installed..." because Jensen did so equip the SP.  More exclusive still was the single Street Hemi-powered Hai built in 1970 by the much-missed Swiss boutique operation Monteverdi, also with AC. 

1971 Plymouth Hemi Road Runner.

The intermediate line was revised in 1971 using the then current corporate motif of “fuselage styling” and it was probably more aesthetically pleasing there than when applied to the full-sized cars which truly were gargantuan.  The 1971 Satellites used distinctly different bodies for the two and four-door models and while there were no more convertibles, the Street Hemi and Six-Barrel 440 enjoyed a swansong season although sales were low, the muscle car era almost at an end and although in late 1971 a reported seven 1972 Road Runners with the Six-Barrel option were built, 1971 really was the end of the line for both engines.